computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

, a fatal exception error or fatal error is an

error An error (from the Latin ''error'', meaning "wandering") is an action which is inaccurate or incorrect. In some usages, an error is synonymous with a mistake. The etymology derives from the Latin term 'errare', meaning 'to stray'. In statistic ...

that causes a program to abort and may therefore return the user to the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

. When this happens, data that the program was processing may be lost. A fatal error is usually distinguished from a fatal system error (colloquially referred to in the

MS Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

operating systems by the error message it produces as a " blue screen of death"). A fatal error occurs typically in any of the following cases: * An illegal instruction has been attempted * Invalid

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...

or code has been accessed * An operation is not allowed in the current ring or

CPU mode CPU modes (also called ''processor modes,'' ''CPU states,'' ''CPU privilege levels'' and other names) are operating modes for the central processing unit of some computer architectures that place restrictions on the type and scope of operations ...

* A program attempts to divide by zero (only for integers; with the IEEE

floating point In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can be r ...

standard, this creates an

infinity Infinity is that which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number. It is often denoted by the infinity symbol . Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the philosophical nature of infinity was the subject of many discussions am ...

instead). In some systems, such as

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

and Microsoft Windows, a fatal error causes the operating system to create a log entry or to save an image (

core dump In computing, a core dump, memory dump, crash dump, storage dump, system dump, or ABEND dump consists of the recorded state of the working Computer storage, memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has crash (comp ...

) of the process.

References

External links

What Are Fatal Exception Errors
– Microsoft Knowledge Base Computer errors {{operating-system-stub